Ramblings of a Field Target Junky

I see this a lot in my travels -- each year I'll get wind of someone getting a new gun...every year. Even I've considered getting a new rifle, all shiny and new. But I end up talking myself off the ledge, so to speak. IMHO shooting is 90% the shooter and 10% the equipment. Let's just say that it may take you a season to start to get comfortable with your new rifle and start to understand what makes it shoot best. Only to get a new rifle at the start of the next season. You'll never get any better because you're constantly changing your equipment and never truly learning how to shoot the rifle well.Each rifle is going to have its own shooting cycle and you may end up having to re-learn how to shoot this new rifle. Be open to change and be VERY aware of what you are doing when you shoot. As an example, a friend of mine shoots HFT springer and I wanted to try it one month. I also know that he had been extremely frustrated with the zero changing suddenly without any rhyme or reason. So I shot with him one month, never having shot a good springer before. Hold it light he says, barely touching it. Couple of shots at the sight in and I think "what the hell, I'm good". So we head down to the course and start shooting. I start knocking down target after target, I'm honestly on cloud nine and making jokes like "I thought springers were supposed to be hard...?" Meanwhile my buddy is getting all sorts of upset because he's shooting the same gun and not doing too well. After 8 lanes he makes a comment "I feel like throwing this rifle in the trees" and I'm thinking "why, it's shooting great..." because I'm never going to say something like that when he's obviously upset with how he's shooting -- at least on that day.By the end of the course I had come in 2nd in HFT Springer, missing first by just 2 shots. After some reflection my buddy came to the realization that I wasn't touching the bi-pod at all and was touching the gun as little as possible while he was holding onto the bi-pod with his hand each time putting a different pressure on the bi-pod therefore affecting the pellet trajectory. He quickly modified his hold to stop holding onto the bi-pod and his scores improved dramatically. I haven't heard him complain about the zero moving since then.My point in all of this is that you need to learn your gun, and the only way you can do that is to shoot as much as possible with that gun. And once you have confidence that the rifle is accurate you can start to realize that it is you, the shooter, that now has some work to do. And that those "stray" shots are not the guns fault but rather your own fault. Buying a new rifle every year essentially means that you're constantly trying to figure out the rifle. There is a lot to Field Target shooting, and it's a lot more sensitive, so any bad habits that you have will be amplified when you start shooting an air rifle.